Monday, June 29, 2015

Staunton, June 29 – Vladimir Putin’s
“peace offensive,” marked by his call to US President Barack Obama, means that
the situation is becoming “really dangerous,” Andrey Piontkovsky says, because
the Kremlin leader has not changed his goal of destroying Ukraine as a state
but only the means he is prepared to use to get there.

And those means, including his
oft-repeated commitment to maintaining the territorial integrity of Ukraine “minus
Crimea of course,” include the insertion of a cancerous tumor within the
boundaries of that country and the election of pro-Russian candidates to the
Verkhovna Rada, may be even more dangerous than a direct military attack.

That is because, the Russian analyst
says, many in Ukraine and even more in the West are tired of the conflict and
will be likely to drop their guard against such tactics, believing that they
constitute a Ukrainian victory and a Russian defeat rather than simply another
change in how Putin is seeking to get what he wants (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5591360521CE8).

“A year ago,” Piontkovsky says, “Putin
seriously considered the ‘Novorossiya’ project: the annexation of 10 or 12
Ukrainian regions. But the project failed” because it wasn’t supported by
Russian-speakers in Ukraine. Despite Putin’s expectations, they “turned out to
be patriots of the Ukrainian state.”

Now that the West has made it clear
that it will react to any massive use of force, “for the overwhelming majority
of the Russian establishment, military excalation is excluded because they understand
that the price, including for them personally would be very large,” and they do
not want to pay it.

As far as Putin himself is
concerned, he “is forced to take this attitude into consideration but it is
impossible to exclude insane actions on his part” because as Chancellor Merkel
said, “he lives in another reality.”But
for the timing being, the Kremlin has changed its strategy but not its goal.

Putin’s strategy now consists of
supporting nominally the territorial integrity of Ukraine but using “his own
interpretation of the Minsk agreements,” an interpretation in which he will
never withdraw Russian forces even as he continues to deny that they are within
the borders of Ukraine.

According to Piontkovsky, the
Kremlin leader is seeking to impose his interpretation of the Minsk accords on
Ukraine by means of a diplomatic offensive. He has managed to get some in
Germany and France to go along, but Ukraine has rejected the pressure they have
put on Kyiv to agree. And so too has the United States.

But Putin hasn’t given up on Barack
Obama and is trying to win him over with the old refrain that “without Moscow,
it is iimpossible to resolve any world problems like nuclear proliferation,
Syria, ISIS.” Translated into real language, Putin is saying “allow us to
quietly rape Ukraine and we will take a constructive position” on other issues.
So far he has failed in Washington.

Putin is also cleverly using the
latest round of terrorist attacks, Piontkovsky observes.“These terrorist acts always work to the
benefit of Kremlin propaganda … after each major one, all the Putin agentura in
the West begins to spread the word: ‘Forget about this Ukraine. For us, the
struggle with Islamic terrorism is much more important, and without Moscow’s
support we will not be able to do anything.’”

The timing of this
peace offensive corresponds to the seizure of Russian assets in the West and the
Dutch tribunal on the shooting down of the Malaysian aircraft, Piontkovsky
continues. These things worry many in the Russian elite; “they want to somehow
stop the wave of sanctions” and so the Kremlin has launched a peace offensive.

And the leaking of the faked Russian
military plans for an attack on Ukraine are “part of ‘the peace offensive’ of the
Kremlin,” its way of reminding everyone that unless the West and Ukraine cave,
there are those in Russia who favor a more muscular set of actions and
consequently those offering peace should be supported.

“A rat driven into a corner is
capable of an act of desperation,” and so too is Putin, the Russian analyst
says. On the one hand, those around him are worried about their
self-preservation and ever less attracted to Putin’s vision. But on the other,
Putin may act despite what others think.

This situation can’t last for long:
any attack would have to begin soon to take advantage of the weather; and
consequently, Piontkovsky argues, Putin will have to make “a certain political
and existential choice” about what they are going to do very soon, certainly in
the course of this summer.

While Putin and the war party could
come out on top, Piontkovsky concludes, the chances of that are no more than
ten to fifteen percent. And that is yet another reason for Ukraine and the West
to take a tough line and to make clear to Putin how much he and Russia have to
lose by making the wrong choices.